Brain Scanner Can Tell What You're Looking At

palegray.net writes "Wired News brings us an article about brain scanning systems that can accurately tell what you're looking at by analyzing your brain's electrical activity. Using a database constructed of readings taken on test subjects who were shown thousands of photographs, the system works in real time to decipher what you're seeing. Naturally, there are some ethical concerns over some potential applications for this technology. Definitely a new twist on "input devices.""

I love it

[chuckymonkey]

I'm really starting to love that augmented reality that we are headed towards. Surveillance won't be too much of a problem I fear, there will always be paranoid nerds like myself that will work damned hard to keep the "authorities" from watching while still enjoying all the benefits of the technology.

Re:more than ever - Thought Privacy laws

[Bananatree3]

From what I understand Polygraph tests are legally prohibited from most work environments. I hope they extend those laws to brainscans, thought detectors, etc.

Re:brains

[morgan_greywolf]

Now we're on the verge of seeing each others dreams.

Hmmmm...well, your brain literally doesn't know the difference between what it 'sees' and what it 'remembers'. Dreams are generally a kind of "mix-tape" of various memories -- they're constructed from memories. So when you dream, your visual cortex is stimulated in the same way as when you 'remember' and when you 'see'. IOW, the same tech should, in theory, be able to read your dreams.

ethical issues? c'mon ...

[petes_PoV]

you're strapped into a machine the size of a room - we're not talking about someone suppreptitiously pointing a camera-sized device at you and reading your thoughts. Yes. that'll be an interesting idea, if and when it becomes a practical proposition.

From the article Those technologies remain decades away, but researchers say it's not too soon to think about them, especially if research progresses at the pace set by this study.

Well, I beg to differ. By the time the "decades" have passed, we'll actually have some information to consider, not just a load of pie-in-the-sky whimsy from people who have no facts to base it on.

Let's worry about today's ethical issues and leave things like this for when they look like becoming a practical reality.

Closer to the Real Thing Than you think

[curmudgeon99]

This is interesting because it is a form of pattern matching. Anyone who has studied the actual way the brain processes information from the senses knows that the brain receives a pattern--regardless of which sense it comes from--and interprets that pattern in such a way that it can make the interpretation. A great example of this is a device that has been built for the blind. The device consists of a grid of pressure-causing pins that are laid on the tongue of a blind person. If an image of some object is represented in the grid, the wearer's tongue can transmit this image to the brain and, with practice, a blind person's brain can learn to interpret that image and act on the basis of the information. I cannot stress the magnitude of this type of thing: the brain does nothing but pattern interpretation. It matters not where the pattern comes from, only the interpretation that is applied matter.

Games, etc.

[n3tcat]

I'd be very interested in seeing the quality improvements in games that can use this technology to improve only certain points in a display based on where you are actually looking.

Now what would be terribly interesting is coupling this sort of thing with a car and a transparent LCD windshield. It would be able to enhance various aspects of your car's display and perhaps make some things more apparent from your peripheral vision.

Or for combat pilots, using this sort of technology to target a craft based on where your eyes are focused.

I could think about this all day...

Am I the only one who is thinking 1984

[RationalRoot]

George Orwell - The Thought Police.

How far is it from detecting what you are looking at to detecting general ideas like "Violent Thoughts", "Adult thoughts", "Rebelious Thoughts" - if they use different parts of the brain....

Seriously. If I got a $50 fine every time I thought about killing someone, It'd get damn'd expensive.

It could get recursive, what if I wanted to kill the guy for fining me $50.....

Let's not ever consider being fined for "Adult thoughts"

Mind-reading Devices in Courtrooms

[Brian Ribbon]

"In the courtroom, mental readouts could have the same problems as eyewitness testimony"

Would that prevent their use in courtrooms? I don't think so.

I know of someone who was charged with a child pornography offence, who was targeted for being prominent in the paedophile activist community.

I strongly suspect that he was set up, however this will be irrelevant in the courtroom, as people know that he's attracted to children. In other words, he "must be guilty", simply because of what he is known to think.

This attitude is not only a problem for people who are attracted to children. If people associate certain thoughts and behaviours, a strong suggestion that the defendant has the thought will lead most people to presume guilt, even when the defendant is innocent.

If the researchers actually manage to build a mind-reading device, it will be used in court and it will lead to the conviction of innocent people.

Crotch-staring guys, eye-gazing ladies

[Kozz]

A study was done recently that was using eye position recognition, and participants were shown photos of all kinds of people. The computer was able to note where (on the image) the person's eyes were fixed, and for how long.

They found (among other things) that women tend to fix upon the face and eyes of the person in the image. And they found that guys frequently stared at the crotch area, such as that of a baseball player (hey, dudes, it's a CUP, don't get so insecure). There were other findings, but these are the more memorable ones.

Article here [ojr.org].

When will this include sounds you're imagining?

[stoofa]

In the future will we get billed by the RIAA for singing a song in your head without the proper 'internal cranium broadcast license' ?

If only it would go the other way...

[mnemotronic]

If only the system, or another, could stimulate areas of the brain to induce the perception of an image. Feed in the mathematical model of a dog, and the person sees, or thinks they see, a dog. In essence, allow the blind to see. Combined with a camera and image recognition algorithms, and that blind person could see their surroundings in real time. And the model doesn't have to be accurate, so long as it is consistent. I'll bet the brain would do plenty of interpreting - if the impulses for a dog were there, and the subject was told "this is a dog", they would associate that imagery with "dog".

Of course, technology like that opens up the way for abuse -- if the subject is induced to see a face or talking head which they believe is their deity, while being simultaneously subjected to sound-inducing microwaves [wikipedia.org] (or this ootoob video [youtube.com]), that person thinks they see and hear God, as it were. And the voice says "I want you to build me, an ark" or "I want you to kill so-and-so" or "Your boyfriend needs a lot more sex"....

And yet....

[penguin_dance]

"However the team have warned about potential privacy issues in the future when scanning techniques improve. 'It is possible that decoding brain activity could have serious ethical and privacy implications downstream in, say, the 30 to 50-year time frame,' said Prof Gallant. '[We] believe strongly that no one should be subjected to any form of brain-reading process involuntarily, covertly, or without complete informed consent.'"

And yet they invented it anyway. I guess you could use it to study how the brain processes images, but for the life of me I can't think of a truly beneficial, non-evil application.

This isn't new

[vonPoonBurGer]

The only thing new about this technology is that it's noninvasive. Neuropsychologists have known for years that the occipital lobe contains a 2D map of what you're looking at. This was studied many years ago by injecting radioactive tracers into animals and taking xrays while they were looking at image patterns. The patterns could be seen mapped out on the surface of the occipital lobe at the back of the brain. The only difference now is that they're able to do it without injecting tracers or exposing you to xrays.

As for the "ethical concerns", give me a break. The only thing this technology can do is tell what you're looking at in realtime. Your employers and the government can do this a lot more easily by simply looking at your face and figuring out where your eyes are pointing. They can't use this technology to tell what you've looked at in the past, it probably can't even tell them what elements of your visual field you're actually paying attention to, and they certainly can't use it to read your memory or current thoughts. It's not technology that's ever likely to be at all useful outside a lab, it's simply being used to help us better understand how the brain works. Maybe one day there'll be a machine that can pull private information out of your brain, but this isn't it. Put the tinfoil hats away, people.

Re:Closer to the Real Thing Than you think

[jadin]

My question is does this work for everyone? For example if Joe sits down and has his pattern scanned for looking at a dog, and then I sit down and have my pattern scanned while looking at a dog, will they match up? Will the computer be able to tell that I am looking at a dog from Joe's scan without first scanning my own?

I'm guessing it doesn't*, so it would be pretty impressive (to me) if it could.

*based on my absolutely uneducated belief that a picture of a dog will activate neuron connections based on my experiences with dogs. If I was once bit by a big dog then my neuro-pattern would be different than Joe's who wasn't.

Re:more than ever - Thought Privacy laws

[Some_Llama]

"Stick the guy in the brain scanner and ask 'did you rob the store and murder the clerk - yes or no?'. Done."

yah sounds awesome.

Stick a guy in the scanner and ask "do you agree with the government?" Yes or no, done.

I think at some point our never ending quest for understanding of the way the world works will end up trapping us into a life of never ending servitude from birth, i don't want to be a part of that world.